Okay. I am sharing this knowledge for those who care. Jakes this morning question - can a worm have a heart attack? No, Jake. It does not have a heart. What about an insect? Google told me this. A heart attack is when fatty deposits, clots, etc. block the coronary artery that leads to the heart muscle. Blood flow to the heart muscle itself (as opposed to the pumping chambers) stops, so the muscle dies and the heart stops beating. So to have a heart attack, you need a heart and arteries. Insects have a heart, sometimes, but no arteries or veins. They have an open circulatory system: all their organs just float in a goo called hemolymph that is a combination of lymph and blood. Some insects, bees included, have a heart and an aorta (the vessel leading out of the heart) that pumps the blood and gives it some semblance of direction (from the back of the insect to the front), but beyond that there is no circulatory system. The heart floats in the hemolymph along with everything else. No way to stop it from receiving blood flow, because its surrounded by it. Furthermore, unlike human blood, insect blood doesnt carry oxygen. They have a special network of tubes called trachea that provide oxygen: think of it having air vessels go from your lungs all throughout your body instead of blood vessels. Conceivably the trachea leading to an insect heart could all get blocked by something from the outside, which would be the closest thing to a heart attack in an insect, but theres no record of that happening and its unlikely anyway. So, nope, no insect can have a heart attack. Scare them to your hearts content. And now you know.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 00:19:08 +0000
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